Entry #4

And that's that done

Part of it is a massive buzz, a game is made purely to be played, and launching it is the end goal, it's the full stop at the end of a project, and is just the best.

Part of it is abject fear, the worry that there's some huge game breaking bug in there and you won't realise until too late and by then everyone will have written your game off as being a turd and all that work is wasted as you never get a second chance. The game never had a huge cock surrounded by dancing Nazi's on the title screen once in all the testing, but the second you press publish...

And the last one, is the weirdest one. It's a sense of loss. When you're working on something for a long time, it's yours, it your secret private baby ( That's perhaps a bit of a creepy analogy ) and the moment it's out there that's gone for ever, it's no longer yours, it's for everyone. You're just a spectator with no control over it anymore.

Luckily the sane parts override the more mental, otherwise we'd just write games for ourselves.
Once you get that validation that at least one person likes it, everything is good in the world again. Knowing that at least one person has lost themselves in your game for a while, that they've sworn when they've lost a life because they care enough about it for it to be annoying ( Rather than just clicking on the next game in the never ending list ), that they've said "Cool" over something you've slaved over, that's what it's all about. It's the fucking best.

So now we're at that post launch stage, where we try and keep tabs on the game and what people think. Where we try and talk the crappy comments in good spirits ( It never gets any easier not biting ), try not to get too sucked into the praise too much and often say "Why didn't we think of that ?" when someone points out an obvious glaring flaw that we should never have missed in a million years.

Comments

Spill your thoughts:

2013-12-03 09:38:47

I played a few missions and i will defiantly come back. real quality product, the atmosphere, level gfx and sounds (apart from a few overused ones) are great. what i don't like is the movement - it feels clunky, i think it would be better if the dude moved fast right away - not slow and then normal, maybe some better easing on the speed? also the shooting dosnt give me satisfaction looks like bullets just spread randomly around and i have no control - i know it's just a topdown thing cuz you just can't simulate the gun's kick too well. also bugs aren't that exciting enemies but i'm certain it will get better nearing the end stages. other than that the game is great, supreme quality product surpassing the level of browser entertainment. great job to all of the team. i happy there are ambitious devs like you. ( and me:) ) cheers!

Thanks for the feedback mate.
The movement has always been a thing people have commented on. I've not got the code open in front of me, but from memory it's something like 3px per frame walking, 4px running ( Or it could be 2/3px ). Trying to ease between numbers when there's such a narrow gap, and allow the player to run when they want to, is tricky to get right. We don't want too long a curve before you can run, or too short a one. Also slowing the player down to walking pace when shooting was important to us as it is meant to be a survival horror game ( Loosely I know, but that was the intention ).
A lot of people have suggested a sprint key, but... when I first load a Flash game and see there are loads of keys I kinda switch off, I want simple quick fun and if it sucks me in then great I don't mind learning the extra key controls, but it can be very off putting to a lot of people coming to a game for the first time. It's fine for NG as there are a lot of good gamers here, but the vast majority of people playing the game won't be, and I don't want to put a barrier in their way.

We do mix up the bugs more as you go further, but there isn't a huge amount of variance. A lot of games just give you harder baddies to kill, they just tweak the health amount for them and count that as a new baddie type, but I'm not a huge fan of that. It negates your shiny new weapons, and we wanted more a feeling of being over whelmed by sheer numbers rather than just bullet sponges. We did things like the bats on level 3 as just a cool thing, they only ever appear on that level, but it soaks up so much time doing one shot baddies like that. It's worth it as part of the overall game, but yeah it's not cost effective at all.

2013-12-03 14:07:18

Medals. =]
I hope to see them in future.
The movement is perfect. You run with realistic speed when you look how fast you change rooms etc. It's also realistic that you have to walk when you shoot. There could be added sprint button for quick burst of speed but this would over complicate game for a lot of people.

We're getting a lot of "Don't like the movement" comments over at Kong, but then our games never do well there.
Medals, I do really like having them, but we've got no time to do them right now. We've had to take on a lot of client work to make up for the losses we made with O2 ( We sold it for a third less than Haven ), so I'm having to sell my soul making a lot of games no one will ever see or play.

2013-12-03 19:11:52

Haven ends with Lee escaping in a shuttle to go and collect Jameson ( We didn't kill him off, luckily ). So the intro in Lost Outpost is 5 minutes after that, and then we go back in time to when they were both together just boarding Haven.